Issue 6 proto
"Butch" Lilly called, slowly approaching the door with her slingshot drawn. "I'm going to open the door in a minute, tell those coppers to back off or they'll get a marble through the eyeball." She almost laughed, the hilarious image of the marble tearing through Lawson's eye was still embedded in her mind. It didn't even occur to her that everyone else who saw the incident found it to be more horrifying than hilarious. "Lilly, do not open that door..." Claire warned her in a stern voice, though too preoccupied with putting pressure on her grandfather's wound to move. Lilly knew that Claire had no power over her as long as she was helping Jim, so she just ignored the warning as if it were a passing breeze. She opened the door and came eye-to-eye with her old friend, which she found to be a rather fitting term for the situation, as Butch had lost his right eye to a gang member a few years before she'd arrived on the streets. Though, now she thought about it, eyes-to-eye would be more appropriate, since she had both of hers intact. Contrary to his statement, he was alone. "Surprise!" Butch grinned, before lunging forward and pulling Lilly into a hug that was equally comforting and uncomfortable. He pulled away and placed a dirty hand on each of her shoulders, before continuing. "It's good to see you Lil, and now may I intro-“ "What the hell was that?" came a voice from the crowd, which of course, was Jake. Lilly hated jake, not because he was a perv, but just because he was unbelievably fucking irritating. "It's called a joke, son" Butch said with a cocky smirk. "Didn't your mother teach you how to take one when she wasn't too busy sucki-“ "I think that's enough, friend" Jim said, interrupting a burn that Lilly was rather looking forward to hearing. She turned and saw that the old man was on his feet again, albeit leaning against the fridge. "Now, what did you say your name was?” "Lambert Ernest Hartigan, but my friends call my Butch" he said, barging past Lilly to offer Jim a shake of his dirty hand. "I'm Jim, Jim Grant...I guess I'm the boss around here." He took Butch's hand and shook it firmly, at which point he was pulled forward into a one armed hug. Lilly couldn't help but to laugh at the look on Jim's face, which was followed by a yelp of pain. The gunshot wound was obviously causing him some pain, and Lilly's smile faded instantly. Only bad people deserved to hurt. "I...I think that's enough" Claire told Butch with an awkward smile, before pulling her grandfather back. It was that moment when Butch seemed to notice the wound. "Bloody hell, sorry about that matey, I didn't see. I think it's because of the one-eye thing, y'know, I tend to miss things if I'm not looking for them specifically. How the hell did you do that anyway? Target shoo- OH JESUS FUCKING CHRIST AND THE VIRGIN BASTARD MARY!" Lilly laughed again, no doubt earning strange looks from her friends. Butch had obviously just seen Lawson on the floor, and she found his reaction to be bizzarely comical. To be fair though, she found most sickening things to be bizzarely comical. After all, her favourite comedy was Cannibal Holocaust, and that was meant to be a horror film; however much she vehemently disagreed. Her friends said that she had a twisted sense of humour, and she said that they were pussies. "That's...well...that was the old boss" Jim said, prodding Lawson's corpse with his foot to illustrate the point. "He went loopy, killed one of the other careworkers and tried to kill me.” “Like the other one then?” “Excuse me?” Jim asked in retort, raising an eyebrow. Oh please... Lilly thought to herself; Please, please please don’t… "Sorry about that, I got a little confused. Anyways, sounds like a fair kill to me, he must've been a right tosser.” "He was" Lilly added, earning an affectionate chuckle from Butch. "That's my girl, always speaking the truth, I knew that we raised you right...oh shit, we, I forgot to bring the others in. “ “Others? Who do you mean? Everyone else got out?” “You’ll see darlin’, back in a jiffy." He turned, stepped carefully over Lawson's arm, and then walked out the door. ----- Carson honestly didn't know what to make of this new arrival. He'd hear about Butch before, he was one of the guys Lilly lived with on the streets, and he seemed like a second father to her; from what she'd told him. He seemed nice and friendly too, if a little absent minded; however there was one thing going round and round in Carson's head: something that Lilly had told him days before. "These aren't beggar in the doorway types we're talking about" she'd said. "These are '''hard' bastards”'' Lilly's nostalgic lectures about the freedom of homelessness were all too frequent up until a few months ago, which in hindsight was probably because of what happened to her girlfriend; the story of which was still haunting him. The one thing that he still remembered from these tales was the bizarre dynamic of her group. Lexi, being the hooker, was their primary earner; a guy named Viktor was her protection, a great wall of Russian muscle that kept the pimps away; Lilly herself and a guy that might've been called Twiggy used to keep watch for the police and do the odd bit of thieving; and Butch was the leader. The question that Carson kept asking himself: how did this clumsy and forgetful old fool manage to boss around the Viktor guy, as well as Lilly herself. The answer was simple, it was the sentence that set off this whole train of thought: Butch was a hard bastard, however well he hid it. "It's an act" he heard Lance whisper to him, as if his best friend was reading his thoughts. "He was just like this when I met him, and believe me, it's just a charade…" "You met him?" Carson asked in response, confused of course. How on earth had Lance met the leader of Lilly's homeless gang? And more importantly, ''why?’' "Yeah, I did" Lance replied. "He was doing me a favour mate, and please don't ask me what, because I don't feel like lying to you.” "Yeah, alright." Carson was stunned for words. Never, in the whole of their years of friendship, had Lance refused to tell him something. Before Lilly and Anton came, it was just the two of them (except Maxine, but every guy had something that they couldn't tell their girlfriend). They were "the lads", called that by every member of Sharp's staff; and laddish they were. Carson Monroe and Lance Taylor, back then, were unstoppable; no, invincible. What had happened since then? Before Carson even had a chance to consider his own question, Butch was back. He walked in the door, now with a dirty dark green hat pulled over his scruffy mop of hair. Behind him, three others entered, and a shout from Lilly interrupted Carson’s thoughts. “Viktor!” she shouted with glee, hurling herself at a huge man with a scruffy beard and pulling him into a tight hug. To be honest, the guy was exactly what Carson had been expecting; a wall of muscle and second-hand clothes. His appearance just confirmed Carson’s suspicions: it would take a hard man to push this guy around, and yet Butch was still top dog in his crew. Lance had told him the truth about that, he was sure. “As you just heard...” Butch said with a jovial smile, which Carson found to be far more sinister now that he’d made up his mind about the man. “This big ol’ Gruffallo here is Viktor, my right hand man. In case you all don’t know, Lilly used to live on the streets with me, and Viktor was the one who found her in the first place. That man’s a bloody hero.” “Good day, all of you” Viktor grunted, speaking in a Russian accent so heavy that Stalin would be hard-pressed to outmatch him. Carson watched his mannerisms carefully, on the lookout for any more charades, but he came up with nothing. Whatever bond Viktor had with Lilly, it was genuine; and he seemed a good sight less deceptive than Butch. “Now” Butch continued, this time pointing to the two men that stood to his left; one sullen looking and unkept, the other tidy to almost a professional level. “These are the officers that I joked about so fondly a few moments ago. May I introduce Officers Paul Townsend and Louis Moyer, my new friends of the policing persuasion. Don’t worry, they’re not here to arrest you for bashing your caseworkers head in, they’re with me.”